


third time's the charm

by sassyneki



Category: NINE PERCENT (Band), 偶像练习生 | Idol Producer (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Dadjoke Yanjun, M/M, Zhangjing is oblivious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-19 07:34:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14232408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sassyneki/pseuds/sassyneki
Summary: Yanjun keeps telling Zhangjing shitty pickup lines, and Zhangjing wants to find out why.





	third time's the charm

With twenty trainees left, Zhangjing doesn’t have to sprint to the canteen during meal time just to make sure he gets a serving of the day’s mystery meat. Nor does he have to camp out for two hours outside the laundry room so that he can have clean clothes for the next day. With most of the dorm rooms now empty and hollow, a lot of things have changed, but some things haven’t.

Case in point: Yanjun and his pickup lines.

Maybe it’s his way of coping, Zhangjing guesses. He remembers almost falling asleep in the dressing room, struggling to stay upright as the make-up jiejies apply foundation two shades too light onto his face, a groggy memory of them talking about how Yanjun was a dark horse who livened up the mood wherever he went. Even in that blurry, half-asleep state, there was enough in him to agree. As much as he appreciated arguing or bantering with Yanjun, that the boy was a mood-maker through and through—that is hard to deny.

So, yes, perhaps it was Yanjun’s way of coping. Scoping out more and more cold jokes from the internet or god knows where, cracking a laugh out of Ling Chao when he moped at the latest message Ziyang had sent him, or forcing a reluctant smile from Nongnong, who, despite his happy-go-lucky exterior, was still a seventeen-year old boy.

“Hey, Zhangjing,” Yanjun asks, stepping out of the shower with collarbones bare and hair still plastered against his forehead. “I’m going for a walk. Could you hold something for me?”

Zhangjing sighs. He knows Yanjun well enough to understand where this is going.

“Okay, sure. What do you—”

Yanjun doesn’t say a single word. He holds a hand out, the other still grabbing onto the towel around his waist—because the cameras are still there, even if the boys like to pretend that they aren’t being watched twenty four-seven, that their lives were being broadcast for profits and Nongfu Vitamin Water, the best vitamin water brand there is—wearing the most smug, most ridiculously proud expression. Zhangjing wants to slap it off his stupidly handsome face.

Zhangjing must look like he’s just stepped on a piece of gum, because the next thing he knows, Yanjun’s arm falls back to his side and he sighs, “I thought that would’ve worked for sure.”

 _Work for what?_ , he wants to ask. But, right then, Chaoze bursts into the room with Nongnong trailing behind, in their arms a stash of instant noodles that Ruibin and Linkai had bought from their nightly runs to the convenience store. Zhangjing thinks that the gleam in Yanjun’s eyes dies a little, but he figures it must be a trick of the light.

 

* * *

 

“Is your name Baidu?” Yanjun asks. Zhangjing pulls his mouth tight. “Because you’re everything I’ve been looking for.”

Zhangjing dies a little inside, and if his heart does a few somersaults too, then he’s not about to acknowledge it. Yanjun has really been upping the ante on his persona as Dad Joke Man ever since they’ve started practising for the final stage; he’s the center, not just for the performance, but within the group as well. With others, it’s always a cold joke or another (“Why did the grandma fall down that well?” “...” “Because she couldn’t see that well.”) but with Zhangjing, he seems all too eager to use him as a guinea pig for some seriously cringe-worthy lines. Zhangjing’s hair has stood on end so often these past few days he’s starting to think he has a permanent case of the goosebumps.

“Yanjun, please,” Zhangjing pleads. This is how he’s going to die: rigor mortis in a plank position, ‘It’s Ok’ playing in the background. Sweat soaking through his shirt not because of the physical pain, but because Yanjun’s pickup lines were too horrible. Death by dadjoke. “I’m dying.”

“Are you a magician?” Yanjun plows on.

“No, that’s Xingjie, and he’s not even in this song.”

“Because when I see you, everyone else disappears.”

Zhangjing closes his eyes. “God help me.”

When the song ends, they all collapse to the floor with loud groans, complaining about aching backs at the tender age of twenty. From the corner of his eye, Zhangjing sees Chaoze and a few other more physically inclined trainees prop themselves up into a cobra pose, stretching out their core, but he is far too spent for that. He was not about to put himself through more physical torture after already going to hell and back, thank you very much.

That is, until he feels a pair of large, familiar hands grab at his own from the back and pull his torso upright. He almost screams.

“Lin Yanjun!” Zhangjing settles for a scream-whisper instead. It’s two in the morning and Minghao is napping in the corner. “What are you doing?”

“Helping your lazy ass stretch.” Zhangjing can’t see it, but he figures Yanjun is frowning. Then a solid weight settles on his upper thighs, a position he is far too familiar with—hell, a position everyone is familiar with; how many hours have been spent in the studio at Banana Culture, pulling at each other’s muscles until they teared up?—and warm hands tugging his shoulders back. “Come on, hands straight, near your hips. Chaoze would be mad if he saw you now.”

It’s a familiar position, but maybe it’s the fact that they are nearing the end of a four month-long journey, or that it is too late and everyone is tired and spent, but it feels different. Yanjun feels different. The warmth of the body against his back is familiar, but it makes his stomach churn and his head hurts thinking about it.

“That’s enough,” Zhangjing says, something in between a whisper and a crack of the throat. “I’ll stretch more tomorrow.”

“That won’t help with the soreness and you know it,” Yanjun says, in that annoyingly self-assured way of his. “We did the full choreography today. Everything is gonna ache.”

“It’s okay,” Zhangjing replies, but the fight in him is waning. When Yanjun climbs off his back and starts stretching by himself, struggling to touch his toes, Zhangjing feels inexplicably cold.

 

* * *

 

“Why the pickup lines?” Zhangjing asks. He lies horizontally across Yanjun’s bottom bunk, legs propped up against the wall—because he’s short, sue him, if Yanjun were to try it, his legs would break—and head hanging upside down off the mattress. “The cold jokes, you tell them to everyone else too. Why only me for the pickup lines?”

“You’re seriously asking that?”

Yanjun looks up from where he had been lying on the floor, nested comfortably in the winter jackets that Minghao and Chengcheng had stolen from everyone’s rooms and stowed away here, giggling incessantly as they revealed their plans. He cocks his head to the side, like Zhangjing was the ridiculous one here and not him.

“Well, yes,” Zhangjing replies. “Why me?”

“I thought it was obvious enough,” Yanjun shrugs, going back to his game of Mobile Legends. This whole confidence thing has never been more infuriating. Not looking up even once from his phone, he asks, “What do you think?”

“I think,” Zhangjing begins, “it’s because I’m your closest friend here and therefore, the least likely to get offended by your terrible flirting skills.”

Yanjun scoffs. “There are so many things wrong with that statement, I don’t know where to begin.”

“Try me.”

Yanjun tosses his phone to the side and crawls through the pile of identical-looking down jackets, sitting on his heels and resting his elbows on the edge of the mattress, forearms on either side of Zhangjing’s face. The closeness is disconcerting, but it is also an unrelentingly Yanjun-esque thing to do: to crowd in, to exude that air of infuriating confidence. He hopes that Yanjun doesn’t hear his pulse racing or his throat tightening up.

Like he had done the night before, Yanjun takes Zhangjing’s hands—in a hold much softer, this time, long piano fingers encasing his own—and brings them down from where they had been on his stomach, rests their palms together on the bed. Zhangjing always has cold hands, and Yanjun, warm ones, like dark and light pillowed against each other.

Yanjun leans in close, his mouth right next to Zhangjing’s ear, and says, “When you figure it out, let me know.”

Then he releases their interlaced fingers, falls back into the nest of jackets, and dives right back into his game, like nothing had happened at all.

**Author's Note:**

> okay so this is a really short one but!!! i've been watching ip and the last ep was today and i love my babies zhangjun even though they are both older than me.....i love yanjun's jokes ngl (i am a sucker for!!! puns!!!!!!) and zhangjing if u come to singapore i will buy u all the 椰浆饭 you want! i just really love them as a duo and wanted to explore their dynamic more
> 
> (also if you came here from my bts fics, hello!!! sorry i haven't updated stepsibling au sequel lately; i have two more weeks of school and can't afford to write anything longer for now lmao but after finals are over i will get back into that fic writing game)
> 
> any feedback is much appreciated !!! come scream with me on my [ip twitter (@yanjvnz)](http://twitter.com/yanjvnz), which i am more active on for now. i'm still using [my main](http://twitter.com/sassyneki) as well but not as often


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